The Naked Civil Servant
Israel has recalled its ambassador to the Latin American state of El Salvador after he was found drunk and naked in the capital.
According to reports, San Salvador police found Mr Tzuriel Refael two weeks ago in the compound of the Israeli embassy buildings, naked apart from bondage gear. He was unable to identify himself until a rubber ball had been removed from his mouth. Sex toys were reported to be lying beside the bound ambassador (though we have heard no reports of Ferrero Rocher).
An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman has issued a statement saying: "We're talking about behaviour that is unbecoming of a diplomat". That is diplomatic-speak for saying; we are extremely displeased.
The term now used in Israel's foreign ministry is that former ambassador Refael's behaviour was an "unprecedented embarrassment".
Mr Refael had been appointed to the embassy in San Salvador only last year. It was his first ambassadorial job (and probably his last).
Strange, though, that no-one has asked questions about how he ended up in such a state. Public servants being found in sado-masochistic costume is not unheard of - British Conservative MP Stephen Milligan was found dead in 1994 when a sex game went disastrously wrong - but how did a drunk, bound and gagged man end up in the middle of the embassy compound surrounded by sex toys? Sounds like a classic gangster reputation-destroying tactic to us, though the Israeli foreign ministry is taking the story on face value.
This isn't the first report of randy Israeli diplomats we've come across: In 2005, a diplomat bound for Australia was hurriedly recalled when ministers discovered he had posted photos of naked Brazilian women on the internet on his previous appointment in Brazil.http://eursoc.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/1459/The_Naked_Civil_Servant.html